DeSantis vetoes many GOP priorities as he approves record $110 billion budget
Gov. Ron DeSantis took a red pen to the state’s budget on Thursday, slashing some of the top priorities of Republican lawmakers on the way to approving a record $109.9 billion budget for the state’s upcoming fiscal year.
With the state’s top Republican leaders standing behind him on a stage in The Villages, DeSantis derided some of their spending as “pork” while announcing more than $3 billion in vetoes.
$50 million for a new appellate courthouse desired by the state’s powerful Senate budget chair, Kelli Stargel?
Gone.
$75 million for an oceanographic science center at the University of South Florida that was a top priority of the House speaker, Chris Sprowls? Adios.
As for Senate President Wilton Simpson’s priorities, DeSantis’ cuts included more than $300 million to acquire land for water projects in the Everglades Agricultural Area and seven new positions at the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which Simpson is hoping to lead next year.
The cuts came despite Republican lawmakers delivering on a number of controversial DeSantis priorities, including immigration and voting. However, Republicans originally bucked DeSantis on his proposed congressional maps, which would eliminate two seats held by Black Democrats.
During Thursday’s bill signing, DeSantis said his decision to make deep cuts was because of “overspending” in Washington.
“We exercise that [veto] power very robustly in this budget, not because of legislators necessarily putting pork — there was some pork — but I think it was just because we don’t want to be in a situation where we’re repeating the mistakes of Washington by overspending,” DeSantis said.
Financially, DeSantis didn’t need to veto a penny. Lawmakers passed a balanced budget, as they’re required to do each year. The state also has record reserves, thanks in large part to billions of federal stimulus dollars from Washington, and tax revenues that continue to beat estimates each month.
The vetoes still leave the state with the largest spending plan in its history, providing DeSantis with enough money to deliver record tax breaks and steer millions into new initiatives aimed at leaving his ideological mark on his elections, immigration and education priorities.
And the vetoes represent just a small portion of the $112 billion budget that lawmakers passed this year. The budget received bipartisan approval thanks, in part, to including big pay raises for state workers, bonuses for teachers and millions for water quality projects.
LARGE LINE-ITEM VETOES
While DeSantis said the vetoes were the largest in the state’s history, they’re actually a fraction of the nearly $12 billion — including the entire K-12 education budget — that former Gov. Rick Scott cut in 2017.
Still, DeSantis cut numerfor
ous big-ticket items.
He cut $1 billion that lawmakers set aside for an “inflation fund,” to help offset rising costs for state projects. In his veto letter, DeSantis wrote that the fund “could exacerbate inflation by promising more public-sector funds to pay
more supplies of materials, while also competing with other projects throughout the state.”
He also eliminated a plan to spend $600 million over the next 30 years on a new H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute campus in Pasco County —
Simpson’s home county — writing that it “inhibits budget flexibility.”
A proposal to buy two new state aircraft for $20 million was also axed, with DeSantis writing that it was an “inadvisable expense.” (In 2019, lawmakers spent $15 million to buy DeSantis a new state plane.)
But the vast majority of the governor’s cuts went unexplained, and it left some lawmakers angry.
As Florida faces a teacher and nurse shortage, DeSantis vetoed two programs meant to help bring more people into those fields.
One was $250,000 for a teacher recruitment program led by the nonprofit group Teach for America, which would have helped train and recruit educators who “commit to teaching in a low-income community, leading high-need public school classrooms.”
The other veto was of more than $276,000 for a Barry University program designed to increase the number of registered nurses in the state.
TARGETING GOP PRIORITIES
DeSantis’ decision to cut the top priorities of Republican lawmakers while they were on stage together did not go unnoticed by political observers.
“What a pathetic display at the expense of many organizations and folks who put a lot of effort to run a difficult legislative appropriations gauntlet,” tweeted Rep. Nick Duran, D-Miami.
DeSantis’ pen was particularly harsh to Simpson, who is running to be the state’s commissioner of agriculture. DeSantis cut tens of millions of dollars in road projects and $35 million for a potential springtraining stadium for the Tampa Bay Rays in Simpson’s Pasco County.
Stargel, who is running for Congress, worked for two years to get $50 million approved to create a new appellate district courthouse in her hometown of Lakeland. Although studies showed the new district wasn’t needed, the courthouse would have been a boon to Lakeland’s legal community and Stargel in particular, because her husband is an appellate court judge who commutes to the courthouse in Tampa.
Desantis also reversed GOP lawmakers on a plan aimed to punish school districts that imposed mask mandates during the fall, writing in a letter that schools shouldn’t be penalized for a decision made by the district-level employees.
On stage Thursday, DeSantis told the cheering crowd of senior citizens that the vetoes were “making sure that we’re protecting your money.”
“They may not be clapping about that,” DeSantis then joked, gesturing to the lawmakers behind him,
“but that’s just the way it goes.”